It's not easy to grab the attention of medical students, but a program created by the family medicine interest group (FMIG) at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn. -- and supported by the Minnesota AFP -- is helping busy students connect with family physicians in a time-efficient manner.

Speed Date Our Specialty, inspired by matchmaking events popular among singles, launched in 2011 as the brainchild of three Mayo medical students and FMIG members: Nora King, Sam Porter and Megan Chock. The event includes dinner and introductions and is followed by a rapid-fire, cut-to-the-chase question-and-answer session. During the Q&A, small groups of students sit down with one or two physicians for about 10 minutes to ask them questions. When the 10 minutes are up, a timer sounds and the students rotate to a new table hosted by different family doctors.

Organizers of the events take care to ensure physicians from different practice environments participate. For example, the first event included physicians practicing in urban and rural settings and for large health care systems and small community-based offices, Chock told AAFP News. Some of the physicians focused on obstetrics and women's health, while others were hospitalists or involved in research, she said.

"The benefit and the strength of the speed dating program is that it exposes students to the breadth and variation that's available within family medicine," said Jennifer Pecina, M.D., chapter member and FMIG faculty adviser at Mayo Medical School. "I think many are not aware of how broad our specialty is and how much you can do with it."

The three student founders wrote a paper about the inaugural speed-date event, "Speed date our specialty: a novel event to increase students' understanding of family medicine," which was published last year in the Journal of Contemporary Medical Education. Pre- and post-event surveys reflected that students' understanding of family medicine improved significantly. Students especially reported a greater understanding of career opportunities, innovations, residency training and work-life balance within the specialty. Overall, students gave the event high ratings, providing "good" to "excellent" scores on surveys.

"Primarily, we had first- and second-years who attended, and all of them left feeling like they knew more about family medicine," Chock, now a fourth-year student at Mayo, recalled. "We never thought it would get as big as it did," she added.

The inaugural event was attended by 14 of the school's 100 first- and second-year students and 10 family physicians. Today, Minnesota's FMIGs run the program at three medical school campuses: Mayo Medical School, as well as the University of Minnesota medical school campuses in Duluth and Twin Cities, said Lisa Regehr, conference coordinator for the MAFP. Anywhere from 30-50 students attend the events each year, and students regularly request that the program be repeated the following year, she noted.

Pecina speculated that the speed dating events have been so popular because they are fun, casual and collegial, providing a refreshing break from the academic rigors of medical school.

In October, a derivative Speed Date Your Specialty lunch was held during the Family Medicine Midwest 2014 conference, in Minneapolis. Kurt Angstman, M.D., president of the MAFP and associate professor of family medicine at Mayo, described the energy in the room as "vibrant."

"It's a blast to do," said Angstman, who has answered questions at several events. "It's a nonthreatening and engaging environment," he said.

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Students Court Family Medicine at 'Speed Date Our Specialty' Events